Free Republic

Shhhhhh. You had me at “John Kerry should be prosecuted.” The news cycle moves so quickly in the Trump era that not only is my attention span down to six seconds but in the rush to keep up with major stories I’m apt to miss things like the president calling on Twitter for a former Secretary of State to be prosecuted for undermining his foreign policy. That happened a few weeks ago, in late April. Trump doubled down on it today during a media availability:

A co-founder of Facebook called for the government to break up the tech giant in an op-ed article Thursday in The New York Times. “The Facebook that exists today is not the Facebook that we founded in 2004,” Chris Hughes, who started Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg in their Harvard dorm, told NBC News after the op-ed was published. “And the one that we have today I think is far too big. It's far too powerful. And most importantly, its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, is not accountable,” Hughes said of his former business partner.

If you have bad sex with a hooker, is it discounted? How important does a person have to be before they are considered assassinated instead of just murdered? Why do you have to "put your two cents in"... but it's only a "penny for your thoughts"? Where's that extra penny going to? Once you're in heaven, do you get stuck wearing the clothes you were buried in for eternity? What disease did cured ham actually have? How is it that we put man on the moon before we figured out it would be a good idea to put wheels on...

Rule 9.k.34 - If a tree is between the ball and the hole, and the tree is deemed to be younger than the player, then the ball can be moved without penalty. This is so because this is simply a question of timing; when the player was younger, the tree was not there so the player is being penalized because of his age. Rule 1.a.5 - A ball sliced or hooked into the Rough shall be lifted and placed on the Fairway at a point equal to the distance it carried or rolled into the Rough with no penalty. The...

Recent news is riddled with proof that America's soi-disant elites are the most venal, self-absorbed, sybaritic and utterly tone-deaf group since the French nobility of the 18th century. And the comparison is not idly made.We start with the Met Gala, for which movie stars, musicians, athletes and fashionistas paid upwards of $35,000 a ticket ($200,000 to $300,000 per table) to show up and show off in the most outrageous (and outrageously expensive) clothing and costumes imaginable. It is meaningless, over-the-top indulgence, par excellence.Perhaps because I was already peeved by the photos of the Met Gala's vulgar display that were plastered...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have released more than 160,000 illegal immigrant family units into the country this fiscal year, according to officials. About 87.5 percent of the family units who are released into cities across the U.S. reportedly fail to appear for their court hearings.

Sri Lankan immigration authorities revealed this week that nearly 50 foreigners without valid visas are among the hundreds deported by the South Asian island nation in the wake of the Islamic State (ISIS)-linked attack that primarily attacked Christians on Easter Sunday. On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s News 1st learned from a spokesperson for the country’s Immigration and Emigration Department that “a total of 48 foreigners without valid visas have been deported” from the island nation. “The media spokesperson added that further investigations are underway to arrest individuals without visas,” the Sri Lankan news outlet noted. News 1st’s report came after Sri...

The City of Oakland is in such dire financial straits that it is planning to use $2.9 million from state gas tax revenues to keep the city’s lights on, rather than using the money to fix pothole-riddled roads, for which the funding was intended. The San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday that the city is facing severe financial shortfalls, despite a booming economy that has seen wealthier households relocate from San Francisco across the bay to gentrifying neighborhoods. The problem is that the city’s costs are rising faster than its growing revenues, thanks partly to pension obligations — an increasingly common...

A vigil for the victims of the STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Colorado that was organized by Team ENOUGH, part of the gun control group Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, prompted a walkout by students opposing what they viewed as politicization of the tragedy. 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America activists made remarks that prompted some students to leave. Students then held their own vigil outside and chanted "mental health" in response to the calls for more gun control.

Xi’s dramatic accumulation of power was unexpected. He took a low profile as he slowly worked his way up the Communist Party and state bureaucracy, according to multiple Chinese familiar with his early career. His first job out of university in 1979 was serving in a junior post as a uniformed aide to General Geng Biao, then minister of defense. Xi’s official biography records this three-year posting as “active duty.” In this role, he had access to classified military documents, including files on the 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam, according to sources with ties to the leadership. He had to...

"""Who Really Wrote the Mueller Report? BREAKING: Special counsel outsourced parts of Trump-Russia probe to private contractors"""

"I am told this is a Constitution. I've never seen it before. It is terrifying. I don't know what it's for, or what is purpose is. Is it for protecting something called 'rights' or something? But like, is this good for the environment?"

When it comes to the economy, 37% of voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats. A ScottRasmussen.com survey found that 26% hold the opposite view and trust the Democrats more. The rest either don't trust either party (18%), trust both equally (10%) or are not sure (9%). On the one hand, these numbers aren't all that surprising. In monthly polls dating back to last summer, the Republicans have always been trusted more than Democrats on the economy. But the advantage may be growing. The 11-point advantage recorded is up from 4 points a month ago. This month's total also represents...

Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has blasted Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee, accusing them of “undermining our democracy and helping Vladimir Putin.”The Wyoming Republican lawmaker cited the Mueller report stating that Russians have been found to have attempted to meddle in US elections.Cheney went on to explain that Dems on the committee are "doing exactly what Vladimir Putin would do if he could."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday that she agrees with a veteran Democratic lawmaker that the country has now entered a "constitutional crisis" — but said she still wants her party to be “methodical” in their investigations of President Donald Trump, rather than rush to launch the impeachment process. “Yes, I do agree with Chairman Nadler, because the administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference, referring to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y. Asked how such a crisis is not changing her thinking or...

Tensions are rising in the Vatican in the last few hours for a number of reasons. First of all, a group of 19 (now 51! [now, 8 days after publication, many more] Catholic priests and academics have appealed with an “Open letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church” to declare Pope Francis a heretic: [snip] However, this is not the only crisis discussed at the Holy See, because the priority of the day for Pope Francis and the Venezuelan Black Pope of the Jesuits, Arturo Sosa, is protecting and saving the life of their loyal agent Nicolás Maduro. The...

The Trump administration says it has seized a North Korean cargo ship that U.S. officials say was used to transport coal in violation of international sanctions. The Justice Department announced the seizure Thursday of the Wise Honest. The ship was detained by Indonesia last month with two dozen crew members on board. U.S. officials say payments for maintenance and equipment for the ship were made unwittingly in American dollars through U.S. banks. The announcement was made at a time of tension between the two countries. It came hours after North Korea fired two suspected short-range missiles in its second weapons...

The House Judiciary Committee has voted out the Equality Act of 2019. It now heads for a vote on the House floor with 240 co-sponsors, which means its passage is virtually certain. The legislation amends all major civil rights law, including the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to include "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" along with race, sex and religion as classes that are protected from discrimination. There is so much wrong here it is hard to know where to start. My dictionary defines psychosis as "a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is...

* World stocks slumped Thursday after US President Donald Trump accused China of scuttling the two nations' trade talks. * The news fanned fears that his threatened tariff increases on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods would kick in Friday. * "China broke the deal," Trump said at a rally Wednesday night. * Hardware stocks such as Nvidia, Intel, Microchip, Becton Dickinson, Seagate, and Western Digital fell by more than 3% as investors anticipated higher component costs and lower sales to China. * One analyst said "growth on a global scale will take a hit" if tariffs were to increase....

[Catholic Caucus] Is Amoris Laetitia really too ambiguous to be evidence of heresy? May 8, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — It is often said that Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia speaks too ambiguously to be guilty of anything more than emitting a haze of confusion. But Pope Francis has weaponized not ambiguity, but indirectness to achieve subversion and trap conservatives, according to essays and interviews from various signers of the open letter accusing him of heresy. These razor-sharp interventions articulate some painful truths about the fierceness of Pope Francis’s allegiance to “revolution by stealth” — and the weakness of much conservative reaction...